Ideographic Myth

from the book The Chinese Language, Fact and Fantasy by John DeFrancis. Ideographic Myth
I wouldn't say i agree with the argument, but i think some of it is valuably true. But i still think that the chinese language is to some extent logographic with some phonetic function. the problem is that all these languages have been around for so long and we learn them when we were very very young. so we can no longer differentiate the cognitive process of thinking of the sound and that of thinking of the idea, the two of which prob occur a split second apart from each other. since we cannot separate the processes, we don't have the experimental means to prove whether chinese writing gives us the sound or the idea frist, and thus came the argument. however, i think we should look at the writing on it's own right, i.e. what is the writing itself representing. i think ideas, but in a phonetic pattern, that is necessarily needed in simplification and convenience of usage purpose. it's an evolution over time maybe converging with the phonetic languages, but certainly the logic behind the chinese writing is innately different from that behind the western language.

Dedicated to all the researchers

my mentor was so lame. he said that this following song is dedicated to all the researchers out there.

LINKIN PARK

In The End

[It starts with]
One thing I don't know why
It doesn't even matter how hard you try
Keep that in mind I designed this rhyme
To explain in due time
All I know
time is a valuable thing
Watch it fly by as the pendulum swings
Watch it count down to the end of the day
The clock ticks life away
It's so unreal
Didn't look out below
Watch the time go right out the window
Trying to hold on but didn't even know
Wasted it all just to
Watch you go
I kept everything inside and even though I tried it all fell apart
What it meant to me will eventually be a memory of a time when I tried so hard
One thing I don't know why
Doesn't even matter how hard you try
Keep that in mind I designed this rhyme
To explain in due time
I tried so hard
In spite of the way you were mocking me
Acting like I was part of your property
Remembering all the times you fought with me
I'm surprised it got so [far]
Things aren't the way they were before
You wouldn't even recognize me anymore
Not that you knew me back then
But it all comes back to me
In the end
You kept everything inside and even though I tried it all fell apart
What it meant to me will eventually be a memory of a time when I I tried so hard
And got so far
But in the end
It doesn't even matter
I had to fall
And lose it all
But in the end
It doesn't even matter
I put my trust in you
Pushed as far as I can go
And for all this
There's only one thing you should know

back for 2 days

ah, i've been back for 2 days. i need to watch a concert.

Random Thoughts on flight

i was writing down as i thought, on the back cover of the De Profundis that i printed out.

Whitacre. He sounds so much like nature itself.
I watch the clouds move by endlessly,
while Cloudburst is playing to my lonely ears.
and let the melody fly,
and the harmony
resonate with the layers of memories.
whiteness outside the window.

lluvia! in all its metallic sounds.
brings life and hope.
and a song like a spring
lluvia.

this music, must be recited by young voices. for its life, for its vibrancy, for its very existence.

a poet's heart
an artist's eyes
a musician's ears.
i don't t have those.

I hide myself within my flower,
That wearing on your breast,
You, unsuspecting, wear me too—
And angels know the rest

I hide myself within my flower,
That, fading from your vase,
You, unsuspecting, feel for me
Almost a loneliness.



i hide myself,
i hide myself...

sketches

i found some sketches i made some time back out of time magazine pictures or my own imagination. looks like i was much better at representataion that time, or i was much more patient.


yeah it's satine. don't scold me for not doing justice to her beauty and character.


actually inspired by turando.

i liked her attitude. what makes the sketch come alive. to me.



yeah, to me, each skech is so precious cos i thought the person in there really has a life. it'll be a cruel thing to tear any of them up. so i didn't. no matter how bad some of my sketches looked. haha.

sad cat story

was thinking of writing something about the cat i met outside my place. when i came home the day before yesterday, a cat brushed against my legs near the entrance to our neighbourhood. it was a stray cat with brown and yellow fur, very thin and limping. the guard told us that she had lost her kittens, and had been looking for them for days around the area. after i reached home, i thought about the cat for hours, feeling really sorry for her and imagining the pain that the mother is going through looking for the lost child. today, my mom went downstairs to send off my aunt who came to visit, and came back telling me news about the cat. when she went passed the area where the mother cat was looking for the kitten, she saw the cat with her ears standing up, apparently alert of something. my mom guessed that she heard the kitten. when my mom came back from the bus-stop, she saw the kitten dead in the road with blood around it. the guard told my mom that shortly before that, the mother cat had found the kitten in bush and dug it out, before a car suddenly appearing and flattened the kitten. shocked and really affected, my mom stood there watching the silent mother cat lick the blood stain on the floor for quite a while. how extremely saddening is that.

Devil's Dictionary

i didn't know that devil's dictionary started so early as in the 19th century and it was actually started in America. not until i browsed through it, among my other ebooks. i've only read the chinese version in humour master(《幽默大师》)when i was much younger.

there's one entry that i saw yesterday:
FAITH, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.

think it's not completely ridiculous.

stop whining

yeah. so i've decided to stop whining. cos that doesn't help much haha. but thx for the comments, pple. been nice reading them :)

right now i'm reading books. organising my music. carving a stone stamp. buying myself some paints. helping a little with housework. cooking a bit. going around meeting relatives. suzhou hasn't changed much since last year, though the industrial park is getting more and more modern every year. i don't really like it that way, but my mom said that comfort is more important. i'm not sure if that's right. the city is getting more materialistic just every day. not that it's not been one. as a city living off tertiary industries suzhou has always been somewhat materialistic and money centred, but with all the rich around it was kind of a centre for culture too. all is lost. mom said that maybe we'll be better off without the traditions. maybe.

a friend went to egypt. how exciting. i got excited just looking at the photos. she, overjoyed, riding a camel with her arms streching upwards, against the vast desert with thousands of years of sorrows and pride, change and persistence. it's just a cool feeling. like hurling yourself into something big. something sophisticated. something meaningful. as if you yourself would become bigger, more sophisticated and more meaningful. like you can be synchronised to the rhythm of the ancient breath of the egyption people. like you could actually experience the ruthless change of time and space, with the sculpture in front of you, worn and torn by the forces of weathering. like the emotion of the dead would flood into you, out of the objects you see, hot or cold. man. i've got to go. someday.

so what is blocked is not actually blogger,com but blogspot.com. no wonder i can access the edit and post page from china.

yeah. felt the need to blog. i will talk about my super long trip back some other time. but here i am at home, my mom's nagging is killing me. she is naggging all about the bf business. apparently she desires a bf for me more than i myself do. as if she thinks i'm a mechine, that can shun the idea of finding a bf for the first quarter of my life and suddenly find one once she opens the gate. and she's talking about all this crap... like i need to look like a proper girl blah blah..appearance and all. i've always been educated almost the other way around. and i've always thought my mom progressive and cool. her reversion to conservativism is just annoying me.

FREEWAY and stuff.

so after i sent fm to the airport, i headed back. not knowing exactly how to get back though. i've always thought the traffic downtown sd confusing and, well, for someone who doesn't even know her way around the school well, that was indeed a challenge. i came back one piece. that's worth a celebration. my first freeway trip alone, outside school vicinity. it's not easy especially when i've slept 2 hours yesterday, had a final this morning, and didn't eat anything. (by the way, my brain must have been feeding on ketone bodies duringn my DOC final.) when i was approaching home, i thought i picked up the feel of the steering wheel again. i thought i'd love to drive. it took me about 40 mins to pick that momentum up haha. so that's that.

when i was back, my suitemates were gathering DOC books for the bonfire. i know it might been better to recycle them but i gave my readers to them anyways. it felt good. reminds me of the badge i received this morning. "i survived DOC" too bad that the readers didn't survive me. i hadn't eaten a thing since lunch yesterday, so heated up the leftover panda express from that meal, ate half of it and stopped eating again. i'm just worried bout exams, which is really my fault and nobody else's. well. i'll be like this till next week.

called home, my cousin was there. he has just finished the college entrance exam. like any normal candidate, the mildly shocked and very tired kid sounded pitiful. he has always been the nice kid in the family, and people adore him. that such a kid has to go through that kind of exam stress makes me sad. kind of. he just sound completely innocent and exhausted. and worried. more than me. so when i said that i was worried too, he said that oh, does you exam affect you a lifetime? no it doesn't. yes his does.

so were talking about uni choices. he said he liked math. or english. i thought it unnecessary to do a degree in english. it's a tool after all. thought a degree in math would be useful, that he could go into science or finance easily. scientists adore math-savvy kids, i heard. he didn't like engineering. or physics. hated bio and chem.(i'm sure he'll hate biochem more). "maybe georgraphy" he said. out of nowhere. i'm not sure i would like to see him coming out of the university without a job. other than teaching i mean. he was just a little lost among the choices. i know he would be. i once was. maybe less. but i was once lost too.

packing

i'm packing as i type this down. it's been too short. one year. now that the common room has all the crappy photos and posters and horny soft toys removed, it feels so empty. although i've never been very close to my suitemates, it's impossible not to feel a sense of. loss. i guess.
sorting out stuff, sorting out memories. found my slashing ring that britt bought me the start of octobor. it's still has battery. and still flashing. and i showed it and they smiled and exclaimed. yeah. been so long.

and my itune happens to be playing sarah maclachlan's i will remember you.

I will remember you,
will you remember me?
I will remember you,
will you remember me...


goes on and on.

it's strange..how sentimental i feel. i don't know. it's not that i'm leaving the school or sth, it's just the room. the room that i didn't even like much. sigh.

ah such a mess!

i'm done.

me has decided to move my chinese stuff over to Methinks so that my non-Chinese speaking friends do not have to suffer through the periodic "blank" posts

i'm so sick of metablic pathways. !!! i don't want to have anything to do with biochem in the future. damn it.

honestly i think i've wasted paul price's biochem class. he's such good lecturer and puts so much effort into teaching and stuff. now guilt stings me as i screw up the exams just because i'm repelled by biochem. man. why do i have to take it! genetics is much better. maybe there something in the bio logic that i just don't get. i've never gotten it during A-levels (Oh heck the A's i got) and i'm still not getting it. i'm just so damn puzzled why chem and phy seems so understandable and common sensical to me but bio is still just a puddle of muddy water... aren't they all sciences? don't they work by the same logic?

and i also realised that my will to suppress the reluctance to do certain things has dropped dramatically. i procrastinate without feeling much. i am not particularly afraid. just leave it screwed. just leave it! how terrifying.

Books to read

I need to make a list of books i am going to read.
the master (less than half way through. if only i didn't have to study.)
Line of beauty...(i'll borrow it someday)
the astonishing hypothesis
quest for consciousness. (i've been reading it forever. always get lost.)
odessy (recommended by a lab colleague in summer)
oedipus (sounds like a fine tragedy)
and i still have my da vinci code that i think i'll put off for a while...
my reading habits have gone from bad to worse. over the entire summer i started 4 books but only finished 2 and a quarter of them. damn me.

Beautiful morning. and spring is gone

it's a beautiful morning in the early summer, the sunshine so pretty that my heart aches. thinking me have let the precious spring time and half of the summer slip away through the phenyl rings and plasmids like a joyful string of notes, i feel a little pity for myself. others tell us, and as we grew up we tell ourselves, that we let a few springs go so that we can enjoy the other springs even better when we become older and more successful, but think, the precious spring of our lives are slipping away unnoticed just as silently. i'm not sure if i were ready to let it go, but nevertheless it's going.

modernism

both pieces that la jolla symphony played for the concert are very
modern. one commissioned for this seasonal finale, by a professor in
ucsd called Steiger. another one is Schwantner's Concerto for
Percussion & Orchestra, originally commissioned for new york
philharmonic. the perc solo this time is an award winning young artist
called Mathias Reumert, who is studying perc in ucsd. it is such a joy
to watch a percussionist's performance, especially when it is staged
with a theatrical flavour like that in the Schwantner piece. i think
both pieces are brilliant.

i'm just wondering, why is it that i have not heard many choral works
that sound completely modern? most choral music composed in recent
times sound no less coherent and "sane" than those produced before
modernity arose. for example, eric whitacre, copland, robert shaw. but the progressiveness in orchestral and other instrumental works are just going like crazy. the
choral pieces that copland arranges sound so vastly different from his
orchestral works. those choral pieces that show a sign of modernity,
for example some of chen yi's work and others', often omit the words,
or substitute them with nonsensical sounds. could it be that words
themselves demand a certain degree of coherence, and therefore
obstruct the complete deconstruction of music? the idea conveyed in
words has by itself a unity to its meaning, and therefore does not
facilitate the formation of multiple and conflicting narratives? in
other words, post-modernity in music cannot be as easily executed in
choral music, or songs, as in orchestral music. (or is it that singers
simply cannot stand extreme atonality or dissonance? that sounds lame.)

Exhaustion

why is it so hard to keep my interests while trying to be who i want to
be? it is not very easy to stand through a 4-hour rehearsal screaming
like mad right into 11pm in some lousy concert hall that aids hardly
anything in the acoustics. the conductor keep repeating passages. the
flute in front of me gurgling with air. the sop solo singing a note
wrongly repeatedly. the baritone is out of tempo. with the all the decent
lines taken by solo and coro piccolo and even the guys, i was left with nothing but boredom.
nevertheless have to stand there, holding that bloody heavy folder and looking involved in the music that has nothing much to do with me
after a day of classes and lab, i was so exhausted, still visualising
every minute spent in the hall pulls me a little away from the A in
biochem. damn.

HEAVEN AND HELL

Heaven is ...

Where the police are British,
The cooks are Italian,
The mechanics are German,
The lovers are French and
It's all organized by the Swiss.

Hell is ...

Where the police are German,
The cooks are British,
The Mechanics are French,
The lovers are Swiss and
It's all organized by the Italians.

some idiot on amazon.com gave hero soundtrack 3 stars, complaining that it is "not involving" and having only 1 or 2 "beautiful tracks", and that it "doesn't live up to crouching tiger". i mean, hello, subtlty.. subtlty.. that movie is not supposed to be beautiful. it's a fricking tragedy. involving. he might as well go and listen to star wars soundtrack or sth.